I knew a two guys back home (I moved to OH from IL in 05) that kept getting bugs. The one would often browse for porn and the other would often open attachments sent to his email. The porn guy had a program I installed for him called spyware blaster. I told him to update it once a week and showed him how it worked. Found out that whenever it would alert him about going to a bad site on his "not to trust site list" he would "always" choose to allow spyware blaster to let him go there even though it was on his "not to trust list". ie; a little pop-up window asking him are you sure you want to go there? Anyone that has used the program knows what I am talking about. The e-mail guy well you know what happened right? However I also told the e-mail guy I don't use outlook express, and never have. I use yahoo dot com and hotmail dot com mail (now called livemail). I tried to persuade him to go this route as I feel it is a more secure e-mail solution, but that was a no go for him. Hard to teach an old dog new tricks. I don't feel like it has been luck at all in my case. Sound practices is what I call it.

Case in point; This just happened today. Everyone has heard of phishing scams right? I got a paypal e-mail in my livemail account asking me to log in to my paypal account for what ever reason the e-mail said but here's what I did. I didn't do it through the email. I closed the browser and started a new window and went to paypal and logged in. Don't get fooled by scams peeps.

I would like to fill in the blanks so as to clear this up. Since 03 I have had and used ghost and this is why I have never needed an anti-virus program. Now Win-7 has a built in "ghost" called "create an image" so.....back up, back up, and back up. Like I said, sound practices.

Imaging is a great idea no doubt but its very possible you could get infected with a root kit and not even know it. How can you know for sure your system is clean if your not using anything to protect it? If your not using a good layered form of protection all images made once infected will be compromised. FYI there are now several root kits that can infect 64 bit OS's so using a 64 bit OS is no longer enough.

Ok wrong track here I don't say I HAVE to pay.. but I ordered a NIS 2011 at a low price... unfortunately there was amixup (probably) and when I went to pick it up the shop had PC Tools Security 2011.. so after a lilttle bit of argueing with the shopguy he said he'd take it back and reorder NIS 2011... but at a higher price

Yea, no problem I have a different view about spending money when it isn't really worth it. That works for me while it may not fit what someone else needs. Eight years and no malicious bugs and no active protection installed is a long time.

I do not need a program installed. I weekly run online scans at three different anti virus sites. I know i am not infected just as much as you do.

I either missed where you say you run online scans once a week or you did not say. Your method IMO should work just fine for you. I would not recommend your method to the average PC user as they need all the help they can get.

With all do respect I didn't say anything about running online scans until it were asked of me how I knew I was not already infected, all I am saying is that I don't need to have a program installed to protect the operating system. Kaspersky has a live linux boot cd. Eset provides online scans as well as Trendmicro. After all of these come back clean I am confident to make a new system image. I do this every month after the second Tuesday.

I either missed where you say you run online scans once a week or you did not say. Your method IMO should work just fine for you. I would not recommend your method to the average PC user as they need all the help they can get.